Page 122 of My Dark Ever After

“Waiter,” Carmine called to the server handing out prosecco from a silver tray. “Bring us the bottle!”

“Obviously I’ll be your bridesmaid,” Martina told me. “But don’t you dare put me in a dress.”

“Deal,” I agreed, surprised and happy she would want to stand up with me instead of Raffa.

“We have to stick together as the only women.” She winked at me.

“I have three sisters and a mother, as you well know,” Raffa noted.

“Yes, but I meant in the outfit. Now I have Guinevere to help me keep youidiotiin line.”

Raffa rolled his eyes at her, but he was too happy to pull it off with his usual disdain.

“To Raffa and Guinevere,” Carmine saluted with his glass after handing them out to everyone else.

“Raffa and Guinevere,” our friends echoed.

My sip of champagne mimicked the bubbly, ethereal feeling in my belly that I had never experienced before. Something like an excess of happiness.

“As much as I want to celebrate, I came over to collect you for Capo Burette. He wants to speak about the textile factories outside Milan,” Renzo admitted.

Raffa nodded, turning to press a kiss to my cheek before he stalked off between the elaborate tombstones to meet with Stefania’s father. Happily, the woman herself wasn’t present, and Raffa informed me her father had arranged a marriage with a camorrista in the south to get her away from his territory.

I couldn’t say I wasn’t pleased by the idea.

Left to my own devices as the others followed Raffa, I wandered through the cemetery, admiring the sculptures until I found one of the most famous ones I had read about. The tomb of the Mazzones, which depicted two siblings dancing on their grave, reunited in death after dying shortly after each other. It was a beautiful display, the symbolism reaching down inside my chest to clutch at my heart.

“Italians are the best storytellers,” a female voice said from over my shoulder. “If I do say so myself.”

Her English was flawless, hardly accented.

She was an older woman, but it was hard to pinpoint her age in the flickering light and shadows cast by the candle flames, and she was perfectly groomed, not a hair out of place. In a golden dress that dripped with crystals, she seemed to dance like the inside of one of those flames, dangerous yet intangible.

“I am Donatella,” she said, extending her heavily bejeweled hand to me. “And you are Raffa’s American.”

I took her cool, dry hand in mine for a firm shake.

Her gaze flickered down to the large cross at my throat, and her brow quirked. “Not as American as I thought, perhaps. Where did you get that from?”

“It was my sister’s. My father’s family is from the region,” I allowed, unsure about how to proceed because I recognized her name.

Donatella was the female capo in Venice. The woman Raffa and his men felt sure would not have turned on him, because he’d helped her take power from her brother years ago.

“Near Pisa, correct?” she surmised with a thin smile. “I have never much liked the Pietra clan. They always felt they should have been in charge of the north just because one man many generations ago was a famous corrupt politician. Who cares about the past, hmm? It is the present that determines the future.”

I cocked my head. “I’ll have to disagree with you,capo donna. I believe by looking to the past you can see the pattern of human behavior and human error.”

Donatella pursed her lips. “Yes, perhaps this is true. And in your past? Secrets and lies, I’m sure.”

“Some,” I agreed, feeling as if I was playing a game with an apex predator. “And in yours? Betrayal and subterfuge. Does that mean you would be willing to act similarly now?”

“You speak of the coup against my brother,” she said flatly, amusement dying.

“And you speak about the fact the Pietras abducted me last week,” I returned. “We both seem to know a lot about each other.”

“Yet we only just met. How interesting.”

“Tell me, Donatella,” I asked, studying the way the light hit the champagne in my glass. I wouldn’t drink it, given my illness, but it was a great social prop. “Would you work against Raffa the same way you once worked against your brother?”